Lillian’s Secret

For more than half a century, Lillian Bassman’s lingerie-themed photographs have seduced the viewer, with their stark contrast, stunningly graceful figure lines, and vivid texture. The subject matter is, of course, compelling. What’s less obvious, though, is the work the famed fashion and fine-art photographer did to finish her images—processes that enticed clients such as Harper’s Bazaar and numerous lingerie advertisers in the 1940s and 50s. Just months after Bassman’s death at age 94, New York’s Staley-Wise Gallery has staged the exhibition* Lillian Bassman: Lingerie,** *with an accompanying book from Abrams. VF.com spoke to Bassman’s daughter, Lizzie Himmel, to learn more about her late mother’s creative secrets, from her intimate sittings to her alchemistic methods in the darkroom—techniques so difficult to replicate from print to print that the images are truly one of a kind. Here, details of the process, from shutter click to chemical fix.

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“Her first love was printing,” says Himmel. Her mother saw the darkroom as her playground, a place where rules could be broken in order to carry out her vision. Later in life—in her 80s, in fact—Bassman embraced the digital darkroom as well, viewing PhotoShop and ink-jet printers as new tools. “My mother would mix the ink cartridges to get a color she liked. She just thought, Why not try anything?” This was the last print Bassman ever worked on, re-inventing a neutral-toned image as a high-contrast study.

Martin Harrison once described Bassman as a “medieval alchemist,” as she was always experimenting with new chemistry techniques and treatments. For this print, Bassman used “solarization”—a process where the paper is re-exposed to light after partial chemical development.

Bassman, often photographing subjects alone early in her career, had a disarming ability with her female lingerie models. She elicited a calm naturalness by discussing the subjects’ lovers, husbands, and babies during their sittings. The Roliflex camera was one of her favorites, because of the three-dimensional quality of the images captured by its twin lens—but she often took a Hasselblad with her to sittings as well. The latter’s pre-film-loaded-interchangeable-backs allowed for fewer interruptions for film reloading.

Bassman created softness in this image by diffusing it during printing. She placed tissue paper that had a hole in it over the print during exposure. Another one of her favorite diffusion methods involved cigarettes; she’d blow the smoke over prints as they were exposed to light, creating a translucent obstruction for the light to pass through. “My mother wouldn’t let the assistants clean the smoke buildup on the enlarger lenses—she thought it helped create an iridescence in prints.”

Although she would later rework this process with digital tools, Bassman originally printed this image using the tissue-paper technique for diffusion. She also employed a bleaching technique in which she applied agents like potassium cyanide to a print, selectively brightening certain areas.

“The straight picture is of the model sitting in a chair, and there is no background,” says Himmel. “My mother had no fear of saying, ‘I’m going to shoot it this way, but I want to do this later,’ especially as she didn’t want to lose the line of the body in that moment by focusing on the quality of the background, because she knew she could do it later.” This background was later added using digital alteration.

Bassman loved a day spent with a great model, and the sentiment was mutual. “Carmen [the model seen here] would always say, ‘I never wanted the day to end,’” says Himmel. Using a refined bleaching technique, by applying potassium cyanide to particular areas of this print, Bassman carefully reconstructed Carmen’s lips, brow line, and eye to create dramatic contrast. She also “burned” the left side of the face—a process in which an area of the print is given a longer exposure to light to darken it.

“She knew exactly where she wanted the light,” says Himmel. This image was edge-lit to illuminate the model’s silhouette. Bassman experimented not only with darkroom chemistry but also with the mechanics of a camera. One of her favorites to work with was an 8x10 Deardorff camera, and she would take out parts of the front lens to create softness in the capture, like she did with this image.

Lighter Girdles, Rounder Curves, 1948; model Margie Cato in a bra and girdle by Warner’s. The photograph appeared in Harper’s Bazaar.

Bassman applied the tissue-paper-diffusion and bleaching techniques to this image, creating striking tonalities. “We had three, four, five darkrooms in our home. Wherever she was, she would build a darkroom within a week. She had no problem converting bathrooms into darkrooms, wherever there was water,” says Himmel. Bassman and her husband (also a photographer) worked at a young age with an enlarger made from a coffee can, constructed by Himmel’s grandfather.

The background of this print is bleached and burned, complementing Bassman’s attention to the figure lines. During the last five years of her life, Bassman focused more on printmaking than on photographing, although this print is one of the least reworked of her later period. “[Computer or darkroom], she liked all of it,” said Hillman. “Not only working on it but the end result of it.”

The Mold of the Princesse, 1954; lingerie by Lily of France. The photograph appeared in the March 1954 issue of Harper’s Bazaar.